Arming Teachers

Much has been said lately about arming teachers in the classroom. This idea is being touted by NRA gurus; citizens; in letters to the local papers; and even by our “esteemed” Arizona Attorney General. Their mantra is “If the good guy (a trained teacher) has a gun, he/she will prevail over the bad guy.”

Let’s take a look at this in depth: The bad guy shows up on campus holding an AR-15 with a 30-round clip locked and loaded. He is wearing body armor (most of these crazies seem to), and since it has been broadcast everywhere, he knows one person in the school is packing heat, this will be his first target. He probably has done his research and he knows who has a weapon.

When the “trained” teacher who is the target is alerted (how?) that a mass murderer is in the building, what is his/her first response? Put yourself in their place. Most people I know couldn’t hit a man more than 30 feet away with a pistol, especially if the bad guy is wearing a bullet proof vest and pointing an automatic weapon toward them.

I am reminded of the scene in “Pulp Fiction” where the guy empties his .357 at Samuel Jackson and John Travolta, hitting nothing but the wall; after which the two empty their pistols into the shooter.

Sadly, there is no single correct answer to preventing the murder of people/children by crazed men (so far no women). We should be looking for multiple solutions, but I don’t believe putting pistols in the hands of “trained” teachers is the sole answer. I’m not opposed to it, but I’m doubtful of how effective this would be.

In my opinion, neither assault rifles nor high capacity magazines are covered under the Second Amendment and sales of these to non-military personnel should be halted ... but that’s only my opinion. There is a whole lot of money involved in the sale of such weapons ... NRA president Wayne LaPierre makes a million dollars a year, plus expenses. The gun merchants, including our very own largest employer in America, Walmart, sells thousands of these assault rifles annually, and the gun manufacturers have their army of lobbyists to ensure the bucks continue to roll in.

Most of you have children and grandchildren; you have a vested interest in this issue. Who is looking out for the children ... really?

Australian Gun Law Update From: Ed Chenel, A police officer in Australia Hi Yanks, I thought you all would like to see the realfigures from Down Under. It has now been 12 months since gun owners in Australia were forced by a new law tosurrender 640,381 personal firearms to be destroyed by our owngovernment, a program costing Australia taxpayersmore than $500 million dollars. The first year results are now in: Australia-wide, homicides are up 6.2 percent, Australia-wide, assaults are up 9.6 percent; Australia-wide, armed robberies are up 44 percent (yes, 44 percent)! In the state of Victoriaalone, homicides with firearms are now up 300 percent.(Note thatwhile the law-abiding citizens turned them in, the criminals did notand criminals still possess their guns!) While figures over the previous 25 years showed a steadydecrease in armed robbery with firearms, this has changed drasticallyupward in the past 12 months, since the criminals now are guaranteedthat their prey is unarmed. There has also been a dramatic increase in break-ins andassaults of the elderly, while the resident is at home. Australian politicians are at a loss to explain how publicsafety has decreased, after such monumental effort and expense wasexpended in 'successfully ridding Australian society of guns....' Youwon't see this on the American evening news or hear your governor ormembers of the State Assembly disseminating this information. The Australian experience speaks for itself. Guns in thehands of honest citizens save lives and property and, yes, gun-controllaws affect only the law-abiding citizens. Take note Americans, before it's too late! Will you be one of the sheep to turn yours in? WHY? You will need it.

Did you know.....
* A 1997 high school mass shooting in Pearl, Mississippi,
was halted by the school’s vice principal after he retrieved the Colt
.45 he kept in his truck.
* A 1998 middle school mass shooting ended when a man
living next door heard gunfire and apprehended the shooter with his
shotgun.
* A 2002 mass terrorist attack at an Israeli school was quickly
stopped by an armed teacher and a school guard.
* A 2002 law school shooting in Grundy, Virginia,
came to an abrupt conclusion when students carrying firearms confronted
the shooter.
* A 2007 mall mass shooting in Ogden, Utah,
ended when an armed off-duty police officer intervened.
* A 2009 workplace shooting in Houston, Texas,
was halted by two coworkers who carried concealed handguns.
* A 2012 church mass shooting in Aurora, Colo.,
was stopped by a member of the congregation carrying a gun.
* At the recent (2012) mall shooting in Portland, Ore.,
the gunman took his own life minutes after being confronted by a
shopper carrying a concealed weapon.

2,500 times last year alone legal gun owners stopped
violent crime when confronted with it long before any police
assistance... Of course, you probably didn’t know any of this because
mainstream media doesn’t find it worth reporting. It’s not sensational
enough and doesn’t fit with their or the Obama agenda. What’s insane is people who
think removing rights from responsible people will somehow keep them
safe.

The Austrailian story sounded a little suspect so I went to factcheck and snopes. Both show this story to be false...LOOK IT UP. Don't know what "the Obama agenda" has to do with anything, but you always manage to work it in.
As an ex-cop I can say unequivocably that using an ASSAULT WEAPON for defense in a home where your spouse and chlldren are present, or in the next room, is total insanity. Find me one example where someone really shot a burglar IN THEIR HOME with an AR-15.
I would also be willing to bet, Mr. Evans, that you personally do not own an assault rifle nor do any of the other locals who are screaming about their 2nd Amendment rights. I am a member of the American Legion and only know of one person who has such a weapon out of 600 members!
It's kinda like being against taxing millionaires while you're on Social Security.

Do you seriously think that a person with a couple of old style 6 shot revolvers couldn’t have done the same thing? I can get a minimum of 20 rounds a minute off using just one, with the extra to defend myself while reloading. I could kill many more than either the Sandy Hook or columbine shootings. With a sword, I could have killed many more, as well.

In Vietnam, You saw the way women and children were treated by men with guns. They were mistreated, not only by the Japs in WWII, but by the French, then the Viet Minh, President Diem and following regimes, the Vietcong and the resulting communist government after the U.S. left. In Colombia, the peasants are at the mercy of the death squads, the para-military right, the FARC and sundry drug lords. In Venezuela, the police still systematically murder street children, hundreds every year.

Such brutal repression occurs in many parts of the world, and from their own governments, or those who dominate them. Thus, assault weapons are necessary in the hands of civilians. That is why we need automatic weapons, not just semi-autos. This government systematically, like a huge grinding stone rolls towards us; not just with a bent for taking away guns, but to divide us into groups where we oppose each other, even as we do here.

Why did Obama say he wanted a “National Security force” as strong as our military with military capabilities? Is it to stop all the illegals? To send them back? To root out the terrorists? Is that the real reason for 2500 Dept. of Homeland Secruity armored personnel carriers stationed across the US? Is that the reason they have purchased 700 million rounds (some claim as much as 4 billion) over the next 5 years?

Look at Mexico, where civilian guns have always been prohibited. The Indians of Mexico have been brutally repressed, and in some cases annihilated. Look what happened to the Yaqui, for example. After being conquered, men, women and children were exterminated or sent to slave labor in the jungles.

And, in our own country, Indian children were massacred, along with their mothers, in a series of brutal extermination campaigns, by our own government, and some state organizations.

You will always have killers, and as Mr. Evans and so clearly states, there have been many times more salvation stories by gun carrying civilians compared to those who were not stopped.

Re the doubt you express regarding a hide-out gun against an assault rifle, of course it is uneven. But, with the possibility of 5, 10 or even more armed school staff, would they even try? And, if they did, the first might not get him, but the 2nd, 3rd or 4th probably would. At least it is a chance. Do they wait until the cops come? How long? At Columbine, the cops set outside for over 30 minutes, didn’t they?

Dear Mr. Paulk, You sir have no concept of how to defend the undefended. The saddest truth in these times is that we are talking about crazy people who for some reason want to hurt innocent people. Why they do is the question we should be asking. We are wasting time using their methods as a look for the answer.
I recently saw a statement that said Hammers were used in more murders than guns. What has that got do with the problem. Murder is the problem. The value of life in the public eye is the problem. You won't like this but the truth is human life no longer has value. It can be taken before birth and no law can stop it. At the same time people say don't put a murderer to death because that is inhumane.
My dear Mr. Paulk, it doesn't matter how fast a person pulls the trigger, or how many rounds are in a magazine. It doesn't matter how quickly a person can stab with a knife or strike with a hammer. It doesn't matter how a person learns to make a bomb or how, when or where they will set it off. What matters is simply this.

When a society puts more importance on accepting the moral decay of immature emotional behaviour, when they promote death and destruction as recreational activity, when they allow the young minds of children to believe there is no retribution for any acts, then it doesn't matter what you outlaw, you have raised a generation of outlaws and it won't make any difference.
As for me, when they come, they should know, I am armed and I am ready.

This started with me writing that the teachers I know don't want to be armed and probably would be ineffective if an intruder carrying an assault rifle while wearing a bullet proof vest came after them.
How'd it get to where "they" are coming after YOU?

Ted,
Now there is a statement that I am totally onboard with. This whole issue stems from the heartbreak most feeling humans beings had when they heard of the shooting at that school, and it resurfaced the same emotions that followed Aurora and Virginia Tech. But as one Phd. said in an article, we need to move away from the emotional responsive reaction to such events and get to the logical approach of addressing how we collectively prevent such happenings in the future. There is just so much tripe comeing out from extremists on both sides of this issue that we are having a difficult time arriving at any type of civil discourse. As we involve ourselves in this debate, we will eventually have to address the issue that Dan is pointing to, that being several generations of citizens who have lost much of the moral underpinnings that is necessary for us to have any social order. How that all came about and what we do to turn it around is a whole issue within itself. We on this blog will have little influence on the policy makers when they decide on their "solution", but it is none the less important that we meet in the public square to continue the debates on tenuous social and poitical issues.